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Published on 05/11/1998 All articles from this issue

Conley's 'Boys' leaves motives open to question

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

Book review

Dr. Frances K. Conley will be in Los Altos at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Heintzelman's Bookstore, 205 State St., to sign copies of her book, "Walking out on the Boys."

Conley, the first tenured female neurosurgeon in the United States, walked out on her job at Stanford Medical School in 1991 after enduring 30 years of sexism in medicine.

Her book, called by some a scathing exposé, tells the story of her years at Stanford, first as an undergraduate, then in medical school and finally on the faculty. After years of putting up with sexism and trying to be one of the boys, she walked out.

While some of the behavior she describes is deplorable, one can't help but wonder why she was willing to be one of the boys, herself, for so long.

She began her undergraduate college days at Bryn Mawr, a woman's college, which she loved. But after two years, she transferred to Stanford, where her father was a professor. "In contrast to my happy Bryn Mawr years, I was miserable during my junior year at Stanford. I felt I was back in bondage."

Yet she stayed. To graduate. To go to med school. To work. For her entire career.

Franny, as she was called by her med school classmates, learned to play the game.

She could be manipulative. She didn't like people smoking around her. To get them to stop, "I learned and perfected the art of programmed retching," she said.

She didn't like to be ignored. It drove her nuts when out with her husband people would rarely ask her what she did.

She describes her marriage as giving her legitimacy "as a female who operates in a macho man's world," with no talk of love or kindness or support.

The book is the story of what happened once she decided to fight back, when she refused to put up with the sexism any more.

She seems brilliant and tough, yet at the same time clueless about relating to women.

Even though there were 12 women in her med school class of 60 students, "I have maintained no contact with any of them outside of class reunions

"It seemed more important to be regarded as 'one of the boys' than to be seen running around with a bunch of women."

Her disdain of women is irritating and keeps Conley from being a sympathetic character. Her style is clinical, cold, her world one of relationships that lack warmth. But her window into the world of academic medicine shows a scene that is haunting.

"Walking out on the Boys," by Frances K. Conley, M.D., Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 245 pages, $24.